Charlton Heston Secretarial Signature Study

Hi:

At Steve Cyrkin's invitation, I'd like to call your attention to a signature study I've posted on my blog, Charlton Heston signature study by Steve Zarelli.

I believe I have identified the "tell" in Charlton Heston secretarial signatures, and if I am correct, the news is not good for most collectors. It appears that most Heston signed photos are secretarially signed.

Here is a synopsis:

The Theory
Photographs and other memorabilia sent to Mr. Heston's office were signed by a secretary. However, Mr. Heston did authentically sign books through-the-mail.

Real vs. Secretary
In authentic signatures, the R in "Charlton" is distinctly a lowercase "r" and less than half the height of the L. The first four letters are clearly "Char."

In secretarial signatures, the R looks much more like a lowercase "l" and is about the same height as the L. So, the first four letters appear to be "Chall."

I have attached two images to give you a small sampling.

For more details and images, please visit my blog at the link below.

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this. I fully anticipate some resistance to the theory, because denial is always the first step. In fact, I would love to be proved wrong, because that would mean I wasn't sitting on a bunch of secretary signed photos!

By way of introduction, I have been collecting since the early 90s and I am the UACC Ethics Director.

I look forward to the discussion.

The Collecting Obsession

Regards,

Steve Zarelli

Tags: Charlton, Forgery, Heston, Secretary, authenticating, autograph, secretarial

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Attachments: No photo uploads here

Figure 1.jpg, 60 KB
Secretary 1.jpg, 37 KB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 14, 2011 at 7:53am

Yes, for me it was till 2003 only the "es" in Heston and this is for me still important, cause if you look at several secretaries, you see it's always the same, the H goes down into something like an e and then always jumps up direct into the t, this is on all secretaries the case and is always diffrent on the originals. The "r" was for me only another thing at that time on which I personally was not focussed on, but with Zipper's study I finally see the difference clearly and can only say my old friend Luciano T. was absolutly right when he told me about the small "r" back in 2003 !

I really have to say back the days it was damn difficult to find 100% genuine examples and my studies back the days where based on about 30 genuine autographs from Heston and dozenes of secretarials.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 14, 2011 at 8:01am

I agree that part of the challenge was there is so much secretarial material out there -- much of it from dealers who claim it is "in-person." It really muddies the water.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 14, 2011 at 11:32am

especially where even some of the reputable ones don't keep very accurate records of the "who" (although it always seem vague and why is that?), the exact date and event. It's more like this is from an in-person company rep about 6 - 7 years ago.

case in point from my collection of a real one but nailing down the "in-person" took some work which is surprising as I don't care how many a dealer claims they "sell" which is why they can't record the information as that is their Job! Then we have the other side of the coin where they give you the date & place (see my fawcett blog) only to find out it's a forgery -or- like we found with that EBAY UACC member who was using fake photos of a signing to support his "in-person" and lastly the "unknown 3rd party employee".

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 14, 2011 at 11:37am

I think it's fine not to publish the name of the employee, as long as the dealer keeps a record of who it is. BTW, most "employees" are not in-house staff. They're independent in-person collectors.

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 14, 2011 at 12:00pm

my job as a dealer is to sell 100% genuine stuff all other info's are an extra !!!!

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 14, 2011 at 12:05pm

So true.

Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 14, 2011 at 8:33am

If I was confidently knowledgeable about entertainment autographs I'd love to do a video about this stuff. I would sometimes mention in my YouTube videos that 90% of entertainment autographs are forgeries (I consider secretarial and clubhouse signatures forgeries) because in my opinion common sense was such that actors, actresses, etc. do not answer their fan mail requests. This would certainly be an interesting video.